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While doing some very late macro flower photography the moon decided it was going to look very interesting. Having had only my Canon EF 100mm Macro lens with me, there wasn’t a lot of “moon shot” that I could take, so I decided to incorporate the moon into the picture.

The equipment I had with me:

Canon 1Ds Mark II, 100mm f/2.8 Macro Lens, 580EX II Flash with extension cable, 12, 20 and 36mm extension tubes, large and small silver and gold reflector, finally my Tripod.

• Lens extenders although make you be able to get in really close to a subject, like a sleeping bee (okay maybe it’s SLEEPING sleeping) you do lose your infinite focus. Remove all extenders before starting.
• Setup tripod and compose your shot, focusing back and forth until you have the shot you want.
• I tried a couple of different techniques to get the shot.

1. First, a multi-focus shot. This is very similar to doing a HDR or Exposure Bracket, where you take a couple of exposures based on different settings so that you can combine them later for a higher light to dark range.
   1. Focus on the moon, take a shot: 1/250^th @ f/6.3, ISO 100 – flash fired away.
   2. Without moving anything — refocus on the flower, take a shot: 1/250^th, @f6.3, ISO 100, Flash fired at flower from right.
   3. Combine the two images in Photoshop as two layers, and mask. I’ll redo the steps on how I did this in a post tomorrow.


Moon focus shot



Final image, combined in PS, finished in LR3



Flower Focus Shot

2. Second, a single shot trying to get as much as possible into DoF.
   1. I moved as far as back as I could. Increased distance to subject increases depth of field.
   2. Note that the moon’s focus is infinity.
   3. Focus on the flowers, and note the distance on the lens. Go half way between them, which were just about at the edge of infinity.
   4. Change aperture to f/32, as with the smaller the aperture the larger the depth of field.
   5. Take a single shot with flash pointing at the flowers, as right and higher as I could reach without pulling the camera.

This came up tonight, so thought it may help someone else as well.

What determines what your depth of field is? Most think that the aperture size is the most important factor for the size of the field. This isn’t true at all.

The three factors that determine your depth of field are:

1. Your final focal length, by which I mean your lens’s focal length x your sensor magnifier.

   If you have a crop sensor, for example a 40D, your magnifier is a 1.6. So a 50mm lens is actually a 96mm lens.

   The factor is that the longer the focal length the smaller your depth of field is.

   Example: With everything else equal, a 50mm lens has a depth of field of 5 feet, but a 200mm lens at exactly the same situation will have 3.6 inches of depth.

2. The distance from you to the subject.

   How close the subject is to you is also a very important factor, or rather your focus point is the determining factor.

   The closer your focus point (past your minimum focusing distance) is to your lens the smaller the depth of field is going to be.

   Example: A 50mm lens focusing at a subject 8.6 feet away (100 inches) will have a depth of ~45 inches. If the same subject was moved closer to the lens, say 16 inches away the depth of field would be reduced from 45 inches to 1 inch.

3. Lastly, the aperture size of your lens.

   The last option is the size of your aperture, as the smaller the aperture is the more depth of field you will have. Same goes true for the opposite, the larger your aperture size is, the less depth of field you will have.

   Example: At f/7.1, the depth of field could be 1.3 feet. However at f/2.8 the depth is going to be reduced to 0.5 feet, and f/32 5.8 feet of depth.

This is also in order of most effectiveness, the longer your focal length the less the aperture size matters. Same is also true for the distance to subject and your aperture. The focal length and the distance to subject are just about neck and neck as far as importance. Both have a huge effect on the final result, however again the change in size of the focal length does more to effect the size of the field than the distance to the subject.

Had a fantastic day shooting at the Planting Fields Arboretum.   Made some new friends.  The arbortum also had a Rose Show, sadly a lot of the roses were not prestine, although I did a lot of shots, not sure if most are keepers.

I was invited along to go on one of the East End Lighthouses Organization tours.  The tour was set to begin early 9 am out of the Orient Point docks, from the eastern most point on the north fork of Long Island.  It started out as a gloomy day and we had a quick 5 minute shower right before I got to the docks but it turned into absolutely a great day.   Now the weather obviously cooperated but what really make the day was the staff.  The East End Lighthouse staff did a great job, they also brought in the best staff for both the food and the ship.   I believe Cross Island Ferry company which I give you generously as a patron for my trips to Connecticut donated the boat, the food was also fantastic and plentiful.

Back to the trip.  The ride was taken to almost all of the lighthouses around the east end of Long Island.  They were great, good stories and lot of facts about each lighthouse.  If you ever do the trip pay attention though because there was an actual quiz at the end.

Long Beach Bar Lighthouse

Orient Point Lighthouse

Plum Island Lighthouse

Little Gul Ligthhouse

Race Rock Lighthouse

North Dumpling Ligthouse

Latimer Reef Ligthouse

New London Ledge Lighthouse

Five Mile Point (New Haven) Light

Gardiners Bay Location (lighthouse no more)

What is the flash sync speed?

The way the camera actually operates when doing an exposure is by pulling two curtains across the sensor. This is how an exposure is done in modern SLRs cameras. When the shutter opens the first curtain is pulled across, followed by the second curtain at the speed of the “Shutter”. At “sync” speed, the second curtain follows the first curtain exactly when the entire sensor is open. If your shutter is faster than your cameras sync speed, let’s say 1/500^th. The second curtain has started to close when the flash goes off. This usually results in some portion of the image being darker than it should be.

A quick example, let’s assume that the camera’s sync speed is 1/250^th. If you set your shutter speed to 1/60^th, the first curtain fully opens, 1/60^th of a second later the second curtain follows so that the entire sensor is fully exposed for 1/60^th of a second. Now let’s assume that you set your shutter speed to 1/8000^th. The first curtain opens, as soon as it does the second curtain starts to close as well since it to be able to keep the exposure on the sensor to 1/8000^th of a second. That means only a small sliver of the sensor is exposed at any point in time. If there was a “fast” bright source (like a flash) that was introduced only several small slivers portions of the sensor would record that light.

To summarize, the sync speed of any SLR is the fastest speed at which the entire sensor is exposed before the second curtain starts to close.

Most consumer DSLRs have a sync speed of 1/200^th, most professional cameras have a sync speed of 1/250^th or higher. Some of the really good exceptions are the original Canon 1D bodies which had a 1/500^th sync speed which is unheard of now days.

Kent Falls, was another meetup with the Suffolk Long Island Photographers group. Although I had a great day, I have to admit that for waterfalls aficionado’s the falls is facing a bad direction. At least end of winter/beginning of fall time frame. The falls direction makes it so that 50% of fall is cover in shadow all day long. I have to make another trip end of Summer/Fall time frame to see how much the seasonal change of the angle of the sun has changed that.

There is a ton of places to take photos and for those unable to walk too far, the falls is barely 200 feet from the parking lot. With a long enough lens you don’t even have to get out of the car.

Kent, CT – not to be confused with Kent, NY is a great little town with a lot of character as well. The local chocolate shop had some great mixes that we availed ourselves to as well.

Equipment used: 1Ds Mark II, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS, Sigma 14mm f/2.8, 2 * 3Stop ND filters (77mm) to stop the light and get some great flowing water shots at 1-30s (as the sun came up the times went down dramatically).

What is a Neutral Density filters?

• Like Graduated Neutral Density filters are used to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor.

Why would someone want to reduce the light hitting the sensor?

• By reducing the amount of light hitting the sensor you can increase your shutter speed.   This allows you to do relatively long exposures without having to do so very early or very late into the night.
• A by product of long exposure is that by increasing the shutter speed you also get a little bit more of color and contrast into your image.  Longer exposure shots will contain more detail in the colors than if you had shot them properly.

An example? The same exact shot within minutes of each other:

• With 6 stops of light (2 – 3 stop ND filters): 30″ exposure @ f/22, ISO 50 — the water turns into a milky liquid, shows motion, turns the image into a dream like state.   It’s something different.
• Without any filter: 1/20th @ f/22, ISO 50. freezes just about all of the water, some movement visible although you have to look for it.   IMHO, boring!

Recently I visited the Wildlife Rescue Center Of The Hamptons Inc. The rescue center is a great non-profit organization that is helping various wild animals and birds in Eastern Long Island.

They have both “show and tell” sessions for general public (up to 20 people) and photographers. They also have a dedicated photographers (4-5 photographers only) session that sounds like a great option. They will use natural perches and allow you up to 2 hours of photography with their owls.

I wish I had brought my 70-200mm or more extension tubes. From the front row, the 300mm was a bit too long (or rather my minimum focusing distance was too large).

Recently I did a photography job at the Stony Brook Staller center.  It was my first time doing a concert — along with the limitations and restrictions that you get along with doing a live event.   With not being able to move around too much I decided to do some creative shots.  Here is the end result:

This is a combination of two separate images, one done with a relatively slow shutter speed and one done normally.

Image #1: Canon EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 0.5 second @ f/32, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV

Image #1 - Master Layer

Image #2: EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 1/400th second @ f/2.8, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV

Now, to combine the two images, we’ll take them both into photoshop. There are a million ways of doing this, but this is how I usually do it:

1. The “master” is the image that more than 50% of we’ll keep. In this case, image #1 since we’ll keep everything but the violinist.
2. Duplicate the background layer, so that we have a duplicate copy of the background in the master. This is more of a precaution so that we always have an original layer that we can go back to.
3. Click on Image #2, double click on the “Background” layer so that it turns into a regular layer. Drag the layer across to on top of Image #1.
4. I renamed the new layer “Violinist”, and attach a mask to that layer.
5. I tried to use the “Auto-Align” feature of Photoshop at this point, but it didn’t work (and I really had no hope that it worked, just wanted to see if it could).
6. So I used the eraser tool and erased as much as I could on the layer. I really should have done this with a second mask but there was absolutely no information that I wanted to keep.
7. Now that I could see the layer underneath, I reduced the opacity of the layer to 30% and moved it so it roughly matched the original layer. The parquet floor pattern was very helpful in this case. (Zoom in as much as you can, it makes life easier).
8. Increase the opacity back to 100% on the “Violinist”. Now use the mask that we attached earlier with a very soft brush and erase the outline.
9. I also added a Levels adjustment to the “Violinist” layer (clipped it in fact) so that I could lighten up the floor a bit to match the “master”. This way I didn’t have to hide all of the floor.
10. Final result is posted above.

    

    Image #2 – Violinist

I’ve now lived on Long Island for 24 years.  When in High School, my friends and I used to go driving around just to get lost — yes, we had nothing better to do and because we had just gotten our license.   I thought I knew Suffolk Country, most of it anyway.  As I have gotten older I still seem to find new places that I have never been before.

Blydenburgh County Park is one of those places.  I knew of only one side of the Park, although admittedly I had never gone inside even that one entrance.  An entire section with an the old Blydenburgh home and walking area had been not known to me.  Well I have now visited the park twice in the winter, and I can’t wait for fall to come.  It will be an amazing scene with the colors and shapes, a large lake to get reflections, a high perch to be able to get the nice reflection, and I’m sure even more little treasures to find.

I’ve been seeing a lot more Continuous light modules and from what I hear they were all over PDN this year.

I can honestly say that I never thought they would catch on, but I can also see why they would.  Just like not having to worry about learning a Darkroom helped more people use Digital, I can see how someone may not want to learn lighting to use external lights.

You shoot what you see, you don’t have to worry about ratios blindly.  It’s Shoot what you see photography, which is good for some occasions but not all.

What is Continuous Light good for?

• One or two person Studio Sessions
• Product Shots
• Short duration photography as they generate a lot more heat
• Where power is not a concern
• Distance is not great.
• You don’t have to try to over power local illumination or the sun.
• Different LEDs can be used to provide different color lights without the use of gels

What Continuous will not work for

• Mobile situations — such as speedlights
• Where you have limited power.  Even power packs only have so much voltage.
• Large group of people
• Strobes are easier to Gel most of the time.
• Strobes generate less heat
• Small flashes with AA batteries can be mounted/moved just about anywhere.
• A small external battery can give you several hours of shooting capability with a speedlight.

These are just what popped in my head.  I’m sure I missed some in both camps.